Apollo Smile

I apologise to anyone traumatized by this post in advance, but I thought it only right to finish talking about Matt Dike's productions with one I'd mentioned earlier but otherwise ignored. That would be Apollo Smile, and boy, get ready for a smack-like overdose of bubblegum!

Ms. Smile has been around since the early nineties and is best known as the voice of Ulala in the English versions of the Space Channel 5 games. Her contributions to those games are pretty notable as most think she got the voice-acting perfect and the games are looked at as early precursors to the Dance Dance Revolution and Guitar Hero games, their spin-offs and various clones. None of that has anything to do with her career in pop music though, which based on this album alone is pretty dismal. I suppose I'm being a bit hard on her as this was the early nineties and her music comes off like a full-band version of Deee-Lite with the sex-flair right up front, and maybe if I had heard this record around the time I was listening to World Clique I would have a different opinion (as in I still enjoy World Clique), but as it stands it sounds mighty dated, almost like they were trying to sell an early twenties Britney Spears to teenie-boppers but without as much sex yet more than what was acceptable for the time. Sorry if that's a little long-winded, but listen to Thunderbox and you'll understand.

Apollo's career continued despite the album flopping and she has recorded at least two more solo albums since independently, played with an "Atari" band named Rockbot and hosted the Sci-Fi Channel's Anime Week in 1998, which I'm sure is due to her then calling herself The Live Action Anime Girl, something I'm sure existed in Japan long before Ms. Smile's arrival. That said, she probably would have went over wonderfully in Japan but I haven't read anything to prove she did.

Most of what makes this album fail is the over-enthusiastic vibe coming from Apollo's vocals, which isn't to say she's a bad singer, but it doesn't sound like she either knew what she was doing here or the engineers and producers sucked. Freddie Richmond, Jr. gets the main production credit here and he's also credited with mixing the album with David Bianco who was given a co-production credit on six tracks. As for the rest of the line-up, several names known for quality stand out including engineer work from Steve Ett, Sylvia Massy, Brendan O'Brien and David Bianco again, co-production on four tracks from Matt Dike (both versions of Dune Buggy, Temple Of Love and Peace Sign), remix credits to Bill Laswell for the Praxis version of Thunderbox and Shep Pettibone for his version of Dune Buggy, and vocals and "box" (?) by Johnny "Guitar" Watson. So Johnny "Guitar" Watson didn't play guitar on the album? WHAT?!? It's also worth noting that Matt Dike, Mike Ross, Rick Ross (not THAT Rick Ross, Mike's brother and manager for Delicious Vinyl), Chris and Cynthia Goss (think QOTSA) all get thank yous.

A few tidbits worth explaining, the version of Thunderbox listed as the Praxis Remix is not listed as such on the album, but in the credits Mr. Laswell is given his remix credit. It doesn't make a lot of sense to me why a remix was made of that track as it isn't terribly different from the original version which was featured on the Days Of Thunder soundtrack. I've included that version as a bonus track for anyone interested enough to examine it. Mr. Pettibone doesn't get his name on the track list either, where his version of Dune Buggy is listed as a Bonus Remix, but again the credits do list him as the responsible party so I only thought it was right to do the same here. There were several additional remixes of Dune Buggy created which are also attributed to Mr. Pettibone, but I have no interest in hunting those down so please forgive their non-presence here. Last but not least, I have seen Matt Dike credited several times as the original producer of Thunderbox, although the album's credits and those from the Days Of Thunder soundtrack don't agree with that statement. Whether he is or is not though, it sure sounds like something he would have at least started, what with a guitar riff heard both on Paul's Boutique and Tone Loc's Loc'ed After Dark and drum loops from Bonzo's Montreux off Led Zep's Coda, but until such a time as I or someone else gets to ask him directly we may never know.

So again, I apologise for any undue trauma you may suffer from listening to this craptastic voyage I am featuring for you today, but it's not right to mention something and then not explain it, so I thought it only right. Sorry if I hurt your feelings Ms. Smile, if it's any consolation YOU WERE GREAT as Ulala! All this said, enjoy if possible and may the devil have mercy on my soul, although the way he works he might reward me for this one!


Apollo Smile

01 Thunderbox (Praxis Remix)
02 Dune Buggy
03 I Want You To Love Me
04 Love Comes Your Way
05 Theme For All Nations
06 Friends
07 Hymn To The Sun
08 Temple Of Love
09 Peace Sign
10 Theme (Reprise)
11 Dune Buggy (Shep Pettibone Remix) (listed as a bonus track on the album)
12 Thunderbox (Original Version) (bonus track, courtesy of ME!)

PS - The image in this post has nothing to do with the album cover, although I think it's a heluva improvement if you ask me! Girl is HOT!!!!! and with five exclamation points! For those who want the real cover, it's embedded with the MP3s in the rar. Also, found this little article asking where she has went to. In a strange way I hope they find her, not just because she's hot but because she seems like she really believed in what she did. So, Apollo, if you're out there, sorry for the bashing but drop a line to the people and let 'em know what you're up to.

Jesse Jaymes - Thirty Footer In Your Face

Is a thirty footer some kind of basketball reference? Would someone please explain this to me? No, seriously, I really mean it, explain it to me please, as I have the odd characteristic of being the anti-sport in a family of sports-aficionados. While my father, mother and brother freaked out over the Browns or whomever was more interesting to watch instead, I was watching experimental, indie and foreign films alongside the occasional action flick. Hell, I got caught watching chick flicks from time to time (My Best Friends Wedding for the win! Who up in here loves I Say A Little Prayer?), but never sports. Now don't get me wrong, I'm a man's man! The best reason to watch foreign films is for the copious amounts of T&A, although the symbolism is just as important. :) I'm a fucking nerd and it shows, don't it?

Anyway, the real point of this post is Mr. Jesse Jaymes, known to his parents as Jesse Itzler, a man of many labels. Husband to Sara Blakely (founder of the Spanx undergarments company), father to Lazer Blake Itzler (Lazer?), co-founder of Marquis Jet and songwriter for the NBA, the NY Knicks and other sports teams. But what he might want to be forgotten for his role in the early nineties rap scene. Not to say that his work was bad, but it simply doesn't compare to his labelmates and contemporaries of the time.

Jesse signed with Delicious Vinyl and recorded his Matt Dike and Michael Ross produced debut album, Thirty Footer In Your Face. Jesse co-wrote raps for Tone Loc and others prior to his solo rap career, so his signing up with DV isn't that shocking, although the clubbiness (I'm patenting that word if it hasn't been done yet) of some of the tracks is a little peculiar. If the N'Dea Davenport backing vocals hadn't been present on some of the tracks they may have held up better to the ravages of time, but it was the early nineties after all and not everything can be eternally memorable. But Thirty Footer is far from awful, with the worst track being Poison Ivory, a pro-white-boy rap for the haters comparing Jesse to Vanilla Ice-like jokers, and the best being party-time throwbacks like College Girls and Shake It (Like A White Girl). Everything else is worth hearing, especially Dave The Bookie, and a lot of it is quite good, but Jesse's flows sound sub-Young MC or Tone Loc at times, although for a party record you're not necessarily expecting deep flows.

On a side-note, I remember hearing Shake It on the radio and wondering why a white boy would write a rap disrespecting white girls. Now years later I get it and it's not a diss, just the truth. That said, I'm a white boy so it doesn't apply to me, but knowing that most white folks don't have rhythm I must assert I am blessed with plenty of rhythmic ability, but I dance like I'm having a seizure. My girl says I dance like Humpty Hump, "in a flitter of convulsions".

For the sake of simplicity I've edited two of the tracks on the album so you can examine the smaller details a bit easier, not that they're life-changing though. In particular, it's noted below the final track that Spit Can Make You Dance, a track featuring a friend of Jesse's who provides backing vocals, is located "somewhere" on the album. Well, it appears at the end of the ninth track and there is also an unlisted outro after the final track, both of which have been given their own tracks for this post.

Keep on doing whatever you're doing Jesse, it's gotten you this far just fine, and Shake It still sounds damn good today!


Jesse Jaymes - Thirty Footer In Your Face

01 Shake It (Like A White Girl)
02 $55 Motel
03 Keepin' It Funky
04 Sho Nuff Bumpin'
05 Poison Ivory
06 Body Heat
07 Dave The Bookie
08 College Girls
09 Ain't No Thang
10 Spit Can Make You Dance
11 Rhymes At Will
12 Outro

dusted: The Dust Brothers and Matt Dike

Everyone already knows how much I love Paul's Boutique, but if you don't, explore the site and I'm sure you'll have a good idea. I love the Beasties but I'm also a big fan of the Dust Brothers and Matt Dike, which is kind of a curse when trying to follow their careers. The Dust Brothers, as in John King and Mike Simpson, aren't nearly as difficult to follow, what with their productions for Beck (Odelay, Guero, etc.) and the soundtrack for Fight Club among other contributions, although I don't get the impression that most of those other works would rank high on their resumes. I read that a lot of artists who hired them for production work treated them like magicians who should be able to work their spell on anyone, which is just not the truth. Take Odelay for instance, there aren't a lot of samples from pre-existing sources on the album, rather they built grooves from hours of recordings they made with Beck and used those as the album's foundation. Then listen to the Rolling Stones Bridges To Babylon and the songs they contributed to, it sounds like their work was included in the final mixes strictly so the Stones couldn't be accused of not being hip, but they haven't been in years so they missed the point of hiring the Brothers Dust in the first place.

Matt Dike's body of work is rather limited. Apart from his works with Michael Ross for Delicious Vinyl (Tone-Loc, Young MC, Jesse Jaymes) and Paul's Boutique (upon which he was credited as a Dust Brother which, accurate or not, was short lived) he provided a handful of remixes, several for Delicious Vinyl artists, and contributed his studio skills to works for Geffen artists (Apollo Smile for example. Remember her? Yeah, practically no one else does either.), Rick Rubin and Henry Rollins' Infinite Zero Records (he apparently mixed their reissue of Trouble Funk's Live double album) and others. For the most part though, Matt disappeared into his own little world of music and privacy. He almost made a comeback in the mid to late nineties as part of a production duo with Peter Reardon named GonsterMacher (which I believe is Yiddish for big shot) that was to release an album and provide several remixes, but the only thing that appeared was a remix for Josh Wink. I so wish he would do some more works or that I could find some of his early mixtapes or unreleased productions because he is so talented and it's such a shame to see so little from someone so sharp. An easy comparison that I'm not the first to make is that Matt Dike is the California hip-hop equivelant of early eighties New York Rick Rubin.

Anyway, after hunting Matt and the Brothers' works, I've collected a number of remixes by the Dusties and a few by Mr. Dike. I'm posting five tracks from each for your listening pleasure, although one of them may haunt you if you listen to it more than once. Also, if you've got any Dust Brothers or Matt Dike productions you'd like to share, let me know because I'd love to get them and, in turn, I'll share them here on the site for all interested.


dusted

01 Filter - Hey Man Nice Shot (Nickel Bag)
Sweet ass remix by the Dust Brothers with horns and unbridaled funkiness! Never thought you could take a song as down as the original version of Hey Man Nice Shot and make it a serious jam!

02 Young MC - I Let 'Em Know (Matt Dike Remix)
Good remix now available with the deluxe reissue of Young MC's Stone Cold Rhymin'. Proof Dike got skills!

03 10¢ - Bubble Bath
Not a remix, but a track from 10¢'s Dust Brothers produced album, Buggin' Out. The album is a bit of a mixed bag with ten tracks clocking in at around thirty minutes, but at least four are classics, and this is one of them. Worth checking out the album which is available on iTunes and Amazon for download, just don't expect brilliance.

04 Fine Young Cannibals - I'm Not Satisfied (Matt Dike Remix)
Not my favorite Matt Dike remix, but not at all bad. Maybe if it had been for She Drives Me Crazy instead.

05 Machines Of Loving Grace - Richest Junkie Still Alive (Cherry Valley Mix)
Machines Of Loving Grace are probably best remembered for their contribution to The Crow soundtrack, which is fair because otherwise they were a decent pseudo-industrial band on Mammoth when that label was being distributed by WEA at the same time as Nine Inch Nails. I'm sure you know who got the promotional push, which is kinda funny since Trent Reznor actually did a remix for them. That's all beside the point though, because this is another rather funky remix in the vein of the Dust Brothers' Hey Man Nice Shot remix. Good shit indeed!

06 Wink - Simple Man (Gonstermacher Longer Remix)
To my knowledge, this is the sole release by Matt and his partner Peter Reardon under the Gonstermacher name, which is not to be confused with the blues-rock band of a similar name. Apparently there is a Gonstermacher remix of the Barenaked Ladies' Alcohol that was supposedly sent to radio, but I can't seem to find any evidence of it's existence apart from this article.

07 Styles Of Beyond - Winnetka Exit (Dust Brothers Remix)

08 The Pharcyde - Ya Mama (Matt Dike Remix)
Already posted this before, but it's such a great remix it deserved a reprisal.

09 EMF - Lies (Dust Brothers 12" Club Mix)

10 Aerosmith - The Other Side (Matt Dike 'Honky Tonk' Version)
This is the mistake. No offense to Mr. Dike, but this remix screams contractual obligation. It's included because I can't find much in the way of Matt Dike remixes so I figured some people would like to check it out, but this is a VERY dull remix that I simply don't enjoy. Again no offense Matt, I'm just not feeling this one like I feel your other stuff.